


born to be a dove

by jubilantly



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Fix-It, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 05:06:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19419088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jubilantly/pseuds/jubilantly
Summary: a collection of happier endings for Éponine, written for tumblr prompts





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> At some point during BrickClub we were all sad about Éponine and I offered to write happy fic; putting it on AO3 now so it's easier to find.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posted [here](https://coelenterata.tumblr.com/post/183005161725/for-the-eponine-prompt-eponine-is-reading-a-book) on tumblr, for melle93's prompt of "Eponine is reading a book but gets interrupted by Azelma who laughs about Gavroche. He drank milk/hot chocolate and is now sporting a milk mustache. Eponine is happy."

There were things, it turned out, that were so nice that she could not have imagined them if she had tried – novels, chiefly. She had known to imagine, though never really hope for anymore, being warm and safe, dressed and well-fed, but she had not thought to imagine books bought with her own money and only for her, with only her wishes in mind, for her to read by the window while her feet were warm.

And now she didn’t have to imagine, because it was a real thing that was really, truly, happening to her, was still happening to her even if she pinched herself, and all of it only because she had been distracted that day last winter, after she had talked to M. Marius, when she had had the letters back and was carrying them to their recipients after all.

Her father hadn’t ever put return addresses on that sort of letters, because that would have been stupid, and so Éponine had had to wait, always, for the letter to be read and for someone to give her something or send her away or demand things of her. And that time, with the letter given to someone at the Marquise’s house, and her thoughts all occupied with M. Marius and how kind he had looked at her and how he had blushed and not touched her, she had looked down at the bundle of letters she still held and realized, sinkingly, horrifiedly, that she had handed over the wrong letter.

She had waited, still, just a second too long, until the maid she had given the letter to had reappeared, and she had looked angry, and Éponine had felt herself shaking and had scrambled to get away, and the maid had caught her arm and stopped her, strangely gentle.

“Wait, would you wait you little– this man who this letter says is your father, he sends you to men? He sends you like this to strange men, alone?”

And that was the problem with giving people letters that were not meant for them: they ended up knowing things.

Éponine had shrugged, jostled her rags off her shoulder, pulled them back up.

She had felt looked at, seen, in a way that she hadn’t liked one bit, all because she had mixed up the letters, and now some woman she didn’t know thought she knew all about Éponine, and worst of all she probably did.

“Not much of a choice. Have to eat, don’t we?”

The woman had bristled and taken a breath like she meant to yell, and looked at the bruises on Éponine’s arms and taken another breath, slower; and then she had offered, still gently, carefully, soothingly, that Éponine could come in, and that they needed someone else to help in the house, to wash the dishes and carry the laundry and do all those other tasks that a Marquise’s household had to do, and really would she like to come in and have some food and at least borrow a shawl and sit down and warm her hands, and someone would get the housekeeper and talk to her about this.

Éponine had thought it easier to just follow. And then…

“Well,” the housekeeper had said, when the situation had been explained to her while Éponine was quiet and looked at her own hands lying red in her lap on her ragged skirt, and hoped, and dared not hope, and feared, and tried not to fear. “Well, if you can work, you can work here, and we can find a place for you to sleep, and you won’t ever have to go back there.”

And Éponine had accepted the work, because it was money, wasn’t it, and it turned out it was also new clothes, or at least proper ones, borrowed from someone else, and she had accepted those too, gladly, and done her work as best she could, but she had gone back to her parents the next day.

It had been strange, and even worse than before now that she had known she could know a better life maybe. They had been as they always had, and it had been terrible, except she had gotten to flee back to work and safety, away from it all, and she had been relieved and then she had felt guilty, and then she had cried all through the dishes because she couldn’t stop thinking about Azelma’s face, and the cook had asked her what was wrong, as if that was a question people asked someone like Éponine, and she had stammered, about Azelma, had made a flood of unpolished words hiccup and cough out of her, and at the end the housekeeper was called again, and then the next day someone went with her to get Azelma, and that had been that.

That was that, and they both got real skirts and real shoes, and food every day, and they didn’t go back to their parents.

Éponine was… she was warm now and safe and fed, and with Azelma, and she washed the dishes and helped with the laundry and dusted when it was necessary, which was often, and fed the Marquise’s bird when it was being horrid and helped Azelma find the Marquise’s favourite slippers when the cat had put them lord knows where again, and.

Her stomach had been full every day for weeks now, and she had her sister and she had work, and because Éponine had a blouse and a skirt and an apron now and her hair was tidy and she did not dawdle because she was still a little afraid, because Éponine was a girl now almost like other girls, people smiled at her like they didn’t mean something else. And there was only the old fancy lady to serve, who did not sneer, and because there wasn’t a man to serve there was noone who grabbed her, and she thought she might get to be happy after all, like real people did.

She thought so not just once, fleetingly, like she had sometimes before; she thought so always, every day, without feeling stupid about it at all, because it wasn’t a dream now, was it. It was a life. For her, and for Azelma.

Gavroche too was there sometimes, appeared, as he did, for no particular reason and with no intention of staying, every so often, and the cook swatted at him and called him a rascal, but she knew that he belonged with Éponine and Zelma, and he had sworn not to touch anything with his dirty hands, and she had squinted at him and proceeded to make him wash them anyway every time, and he got to sit with them when they were done working and he was done being underfoot, and he could have work, he had been told, if he wanted it, and the cook gave him food, even if she grumbled as if someone were forcing her to, and Éponine had a home here maybe, and her family still.

And then there were the books.

There were books, because the maid and the cook liked to read novels for themselves and to each other, and Éponine had listened wide-eyed the first time and the cook had noticed, and she had let Éponine have the book when they were done with it, and Éponine had read it, had devoured it like she hadn’t known one could devour books, and she had read it to Azelma, quietly, overcome with some feeling she hadn’t known the name for and still didn’t.

And she had borrowed another book and another, and devoured those too.

And then she had decided to buy books for herself.

She couldn’t afford many, of course, but she saved up, and she had the cook accompany her to a bookshop and help her choose a book all for herself, bought with her own money earned in the proper way, and she payed for it with shaking hands and clutched the book to her chest all the way back, and then she sat down in the corner she always sat in, to open it, reverently, and to start reading.

It was a good book.

Maybe she thought so only because she had bought it herself, but it was the best book she had read yet; she hardly noticed when Gavroche came in, talking loudly, waving his arms, doing an impression of someone to a laughing Azelma. She continued reading through the talking and the laughing, and she continued reading through Gavroche bothering the cook, and she continued reading and fell further and further into the story, and she didn’t notice what was going on around her at all anymore, until Azelma laughed again, laughed so hard that she shrieked, and then Éponine looked up, a little disoriented.

The sight that greeted her did not serve to make her less so.

There was something on Gavroche’s face like a mustache, like the kind of mustache-shaped thing Éponine had seen on people before when they drank things too hastily, but Gavroche’s was of a size that most actual mustaches could not even hope to achieve, and Éponine could not for anything in the world say what kind of drink would leave a mustache of that colour.

Azelma was pointing and laughing, breathless with it.

Éponine smiled, too.

With utmost sincerity and care, Gavroche toasted them both with his mug and lifted it to his mouth again, but there was no explanation forthcoming, so Éponine closed her book and leaned forward a little and squinted at her brother.

“What is that? Where’d you get it?”

Gavroche took his time swallowing his mouthful of his drink.

“Cook gave it to me. ‘S chocolate. Want some?”

He held the mug out to her, and she reached for it, a bit suspicious.

It smelled heavenly, it wasn’t that; she just didn’t trust her brother to not pour it on her shirt, or otherwise make a fool of her. But then, she didn’t think he would risk wasting chocolate.

She took the mug from him, and she took a sip, and she saw her brother watch attentively either for her reaction or, more likely, that she didn’t steal too much of his chocolate.

It was even better than she had thought it would be, all sweet and warm and wonderful, and the small sip was more than enough, that and getting to watch her sister take a sip too and close her eyes to savour the taste, and getting to see her brother be spoiled like this, and having her book and her siblings and her safety and a future, a future in which she didn’t have to be afraid anymore, a future carrying the possibility of happiness, a future, stretching out in front of her.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posted [here](https://coelenterata.tumblr.com/post/183026804060/i-would-love-some-happy-eponine-fic-maybe) on tumblr, for pilferingapples' prompt of "Eponine getting to have some flowers?!?"

She kept going to help the old man water his flowers, even after he had told her where to find M. Marius, because she didn’t have much else to do with what little and pitiful life she had still. She kept going to help the old man water his flowers, because it was nice, to look at flowers and to run barefoot over cool earth and to have water splash on her feet and legs and to be told that she could pluck a flower, if she wanted, for her troubles.

She did want to, and every time she would choose one that was beautiful but not the most beautiful in the garden, because that one had to live – she just wanted one that was beautiful enough, even if it had a spot here or a torn petal there, and she wanted to put it in her hair and feel pretty and free for a little while.

“I cannot offer you more,” the old man would say, sadly, “I cannot offer you more, because I hardly have anything myself. But if you want flowers, they are yours.”

And she would pick a flower and wind it into her hair or tuck it behind her ear, and she would put the bucket back where it belonged, and it was nice.

Not as nice as any of her dreams of what her life could have been, but nicer than what her life was, in any case.

She started staying to talk to the old man, too; to Father Mabeuf, as his housekeeper called him, as Mother Plutarque called him; he told her about flowers, and she liked to know things, and to not be talked down to, and he was delighted when she told him she could read. A smile went over his old sad face like she had only seen him direct at his flowers before, when she said she could read.

“Reading,” he said, “is the truest pleasure in the world.”

“Eh,” Éponine said, “I rather think having a full stomach, and being warm, and all that, is better.”

And he bowed his head and nodded, reluctantly, and that was that.

And she kept watering the flowers, and taking care of them and learning about them, and she got to put flowers in her hair still, and it was… nice.

Except it wasn’t nice enough, because the world wasn’t nice, was it, and she was still poor and hungry and would be cold come winter, and Mabeuf, she knew, was ignoring determinedly that he may end up being poor and hungry and cold sooner than he wanted, too.

Which didn’t help, the ignoring didn’t, but if Mother Plutarque couldn’t talk sense into him, Éponine would hardly have more success. And so she ignored his ignoring, and she watered his flowers while she still could, and she thought of them as her flowers too, a little, because after all she was taking care of them too, and she imagined being someone who had a garden of her own, and she waited for the end.

And then one day money fell from the heavens, or so Mother Plutarque said, Éponine wasn’t there when it did and so she didn’t know what that meant, but there was money, and it was not a little money; it was a lot, it was enough to make Father Mabeuf’s life free of trouble and worry for at least a while, and, as he told Éponine, he was convinced that it was entirely wrong of him to even consider accepting it.

“Are you mad!” Éponine said, blurted out, too loudly, “That’s so much money, give it to me if you don’t know what to do with it!”

Mabeuf frowned.

“It is not mine. It is not right, to keep it.”

“Nothing is right!” Éponine said, suddenly angry and surprised at herself for it, waving her arms, stomping a foot. “Nothing is right, look at you, look at me, look at my family, you haven’t met them and you don’t want to meet them, there is nothing that’s right in this world, but you need money and I need money, and here is money!”

She knew she was right as she said it, she knew she was, and she took care to steady her breathing again, but she raised her chin too, determined.

The old man was frowning still.

“What would you do with it, then?”

Éponine stopped, and thought.

What would she do?

There were glib answers and stupid answers and defiant stubborn angry not-answers, and there were answers that were plans that were hopes that were therefore stupid too, but money could buy a lot of things.

“So many things,” she said, quietly. “So many things. You can do a lot with a little money, my father taught me, but I don’t want to do what he did. But you can do a lot with a little money, you just have to know where to start.”

He didn’t look happy, still, but he was listening, and Éponine thought some more.

He had debts to pay, she knew, because Mother Plutarque did not keep secrets, and Éponine had need of food and of proper clothing, and then after that… there was a lot to do in the world if one looked proper, and if one was determined.

And if the old man survived, and she survived, then she would get to go to this garden a while longer, too, would get to care for the plants and put flowers in her hair, and that would be nice, and if there was money… she could find a way, and she could have more nice things, and she could be happy.

She was determined to survive, and to have flowers, and to be happy.

(She did, and she did, and she was.)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posted [here](https://coelenterata.tumblr.com/post/183047626385/happy-eponine-prompts-eponine-teaching-gavroche) on tumblr, for akallabeth-joie's prompt of "Eponine teaching Gavroche how to read? Or an AU in which Eponine and her siblings run off and find employment at a nice farm that may be the same one Fantine worked at before she went to Paris?"

They had run away when Gavroche was old enough that if their mother had cared for him, if their parents had still thought they had the kind of future that required education, he would have started receiving an education, but she hadn’t and they hadn’t, and Éponine hadn’t wanted to know how bad things were going to get, and so she had taken Azelma and Gavroche and run away, and while they were certainly happier than they would have been, Gavroche had continued to not have an education, and so he was curious to the point of nosiness, bright-eyed with ideas, and never shy an answer or a retort, but he didn’t know how to read.

He didn’t need to, really, being as he was a little boy on a farm being underfoot, and just starting to work like his sisters had been since they arrived, and he was still too little for it to be fair that he should have to earn his living but then, they had all been too little when they had started earning beatings at home, so work it was, making sure they weren’t just more mouths to feed, making sure they could stay here, and stay together.

In any case, Gavroche couldn’t read, and Éponine didn’t think much about that, had forgotten it in fact, until she managed to find a newspaper their first summer at the farm and he interrupted her reading of it by throwing himself across her lap where she sat on a patch of dry grass in the sun.

“Whassat,” he said, mouth full of something or other.

There were wild strawberries everywhere, this time of year. It was, most probably, a whole handful of little red strawberries shoved into his mouth all at once to keep them from the other kids. He did that, except when he remembered to save some for his sisters.

His hands were dirty from digging in the ground, and from sticky squashed berries, too, and he grabbed for the paper half-heartedly, and Éponine pushed him off her lap to pull the now-creased newspaper aside before he put his legs back across hers.

“Newspaper.” She shook it out and started reading again, picking her way through the words, some of which were longer than she would have preferred.

She only got as far as three quarters of a sentence, about some boring thing that had happened too far from the farm for Éponine to care about it, and was nice to read because of that, because it was just a boring thing to read while the sun warmed the back of her neck and the top of her head and her arms and her legs, but it only took three quarters of a sentence before Gavroche kicked at her legs.

“Whatcha doin’?”

She swatted at him with the newspaper.

“Reading the newspaper.”

He heaved a sigh.

“Reading’s for boring people.”

“Really?” Éponine said. “Why?”

“Only boring people know how to read,” Gavroche declared, like that answered anything.

Which Éponine supposed it did. Anything he couldn’t do was for boring people, and anything that was for boring people he didn’t want to do anyway, and noone had ever taught him to read, so he didn’t care for it.

He should know, she thought. It seemed like something he should know to do, and it seemed like something he might like, too.

She could teach him, she supposed. Even if it meant that he would in the future interrupt her reading not just to be a nuisance but to get to read things first.

“Well, it’s not boring,” she told him, and tried not to sound gleeful just yet, “You learn a lot of things other people who don’t read wouldn’t know.”

And that got him, as she had known it would, and he scrambled into a more upright position and leaned to squint at the newspaper and then at her.

“How does it work, then?”, he demanded, and she pushed him off her lap again and folded her newspaper to tuck it away for later, and got up to find a stick with which to scratch letters into the ground.

Gavroche followed, and one of the chickens followed though that seemed a coincidence more than anything because it wandered off soon enough, and Éponine found a stick and a bit of earth that was flat and free of grass, and she tried to impress on Gavroche with a look that it was important that he listen.

He wasn’t even next to her anymore.

He had stayed some paces behind her and was plucking weeds out from in between other weeds, and folding them around themselves and pulling to send the tops of them flying, and crowing when they flew farther than expected.

Éponine whistled, loudly, because she could, and he came running up to her and grinned.

“Why do we gotta stand here to read? I thought the newspaper was for reading.”

“You can’t read that yet,” Éponine said. “You have to learn your letters first.”

And she scratched an A into the ground, A for Azelma, and started explaining as best she could, while Gavroche listened.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posted [here](https://coelenterata.tumblr.com/post/183071414910/happy-eponine-prompts-eponine-and-cosette-being) on tumblr, for midautumnnightdream's prompt of "Eponine and Cosette being friends and getting into gardening-related shenanigans together in whichever happier AU setting you prefer"

It took days and days, of Éponine’s wounds healing, of everyone waiting for Marius to wake up, of Cosette holding herself very straight and speaking very steadily while her hands shook, of Éponine raising her chin and sneering and then again flinching every time Marius’s horrid grandfather raised his voice, it took days and days, for the two of them to decide that they didn’t have to be enemies, at least, and then more days for them to figure out what that meant, and then.

Then Cosette listened when Éponine told her that the grandfather was horrid, and Éponine recognized a light in Cosette’s eyes of an idea forming just before she actually spoke, and then Cosette’s papa took both of them to the house in which Cosette had lived before, where she had been when Éponine had found her for Marius, that strange old house hidden behind an overgrown garden. Because Cosette wanted to be in her garden, and Éponine wanted to be away, both of them wanted to be away, from the stifling house in which Marius was not yet alive again.

The garden was even more overgrown now, they discovered, than it had been before, a proper choking wilderness, too tangled to be lively, not charming anymore because it looked very much like it was rotting underneath.

“Oh,” Cosette said, very quietly and very sadly.

Éponine didn’t know what to make of that.

She didn’t know how to make a garden pretty again, either, but she had had to guess at more dangerous things, and they could hardly stand around all day sighing and doing nothing about it.

“So, we clean all this up, then? Pull it all out, plant some pretty things instead?”

Cosette startled.

“We help it, I think, to be a better version of this. I quite liked it as a little wilderness, it just needs some care again. It’s been left lonely for too long.”

And she stepped into the garden, carefully, and Éponine saw the branches almost grabbing for her and briars trying to tangle in her hair, but Cosette didn’t seem to mind, Cosette knelt in the dirt to tear out a plant and reveal smaller green leaves of something else, Cosette stretched on tiptoes and greeted a rose like an old friend, Cosette wiped her face and got dirt on it and moved her skirt away from damp moss only to get dirt on the fabric, too, and Éponine stood and watched, confused.

So much had happened, since they had been children. So much had happened, and Éponine had only just started getting used to how their roles had gotten reversed, and now there was this.

The lark was a proper lady now, wasn’t she, wasn’t she, but she didn’t behave like one, or maybe she did, what did Éponine know of being a lady anymore, the lark was a lady but she didn’t seem to care much about it, and Éponine who had wanted nothing more than to be a lady stood frozen in a borrowed dress and saw… Cosette, dirt on her face, laughing.

How strange, to have dirt on one’s face and be happy about it.

How strange, too, that the lark was a lady and had dirt on her face while pretty little Éponine had turned ugly and horrible and was getting to wear a pretty dress again nevertheless.

Éponine stood at the edge of the garden, not quite frozen, not quite fidgeting, and watched Cosette, unsure, until Cosette remembered her, looked back at her, questioning, and asked her what flowers she would have them plant in place of the ones that had died.

She asked as if she truly wanted to know.

And Éponine thought, answered, reconsidered, amended her answer; and they went to the market the next day, and they tore out weeds, and pruned what was getting in its own way, and settled new plants gently into the soft earth, and bent their heads together in the sun to talk about the garden, and then about everything else, a little.

It took time, gardening – the garden was not small, and it was full to the brim, and everywhere there were stubborn weeds tough stems thorny briars to be either careful or determined with, and so it took time.

All the while, Cosette’s papa hovered, silent and kind, making sure they were safe, making sure they had all that they needed, and in turn Cosette made sure he ate, and made sure Éponine ate, too.

Éponine wasn’t sure what she did, in turn. It was alright. She was learning. There was time suddenly to not yet know.

There was time and Éponine’s wounds healed fully, the ones from the fighting at the barricade, and she realized that her wrists were less bony when she and Cosette worked side by side and her own hand no longer looked like a dead thing next to Cosette’s, and she realized too that she didn’t resent Cosette much anymore, and that Cosette was no longer looking at her scared, only a little apprehensive still, when they misstepped in their conversation.

She had a friend, it occurred to Éponine, when Cosette triumphantly pulled out a dead fern and then looked at her hands, dirty halfway to the elbows, and laughed, and held out a dirt-covered finger just a few inches away from Éponine’s face, eyebrows raised, not quite playful.

Éponine looked at it, and looked at Cosette’s face that was asking for permission, and rolled her eyes and had a lump in her throat, but not in a bad way.

“Alright then.”

And she didn’t feel the urge to add an insult, at all, and Cosette reached out and solemnly smeared dirt on Éponine’s face, and it felt a little like being a child with a sister again.

It was good.

It was good, to be among the plants and to laugh; she was happy, she breathed freely and rejoiced in learning to speak soft and learning that Cosette was not one to cower anymore, ever.

They had a garden, and they were friends, and Éponine wanted to stay there forever, being happy, except every day they went back to see if Marius was better, and every day Éponine wondered how long she would be allowed this, and every day she said nothing.

There was a crease, worried, between Cosette’s brows when she looked at Marius, and sometimes there was the same crease there when she was looking at nothing at all, and one day she was sitting on a blanket in the grass in that perfect overflowing alive garden and Éponine could see her start to worry again, and Éponine abandoned the cutting of flowers in favour of her own worries.

“He’ll wake up and you’ll marry him, won’t you,” she said, before she knew how she was going to continue, and then she suddenly knew. “And he will not want me there and you will have no need of me, and where will I go then?”

Cosette looked up at her like she was very stupid, and in retaliation and indignance and embarrassment at having asked the question, though she couldn’t have identified the feelings at that moment, Éponine emptied her basket of flowers over Cosette’s head, a cloud of petals white and pink and yellow falling and floating to settle all over Cosette’s hair in its perfect shiny curls, making her look like something out of a fairytale.

“Oh!” Cosette said, indignant too, but laughing, and they abandoned the conversation to be childish, for a while, in their garden in the sun, until they settled out of breath on the stone bench, and then Cosette turned to Éponine and looked very resolute and earnest.

“We shall live together, all of us, after the wedding,” she said, like there was no other way for the future to be. “Marius and I and Papa and you, and we shall have a garden, and we shall be happy, and– and we shall none of us want for food or for family ever again.”

“Promise?”, Éponine said, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Cosette looked resolute and earnest still.

“I promise.”


End file.
